More on the extraordinary girls’ lacrosse Class of 2012 — and Team 180

My story on Team 180, the state’s top girls’ lacrosse club program, and its Class of 2012 collegiate commitments on early national letter of intent signing day is in the Wednesday paper.

I’m enough of a traditionalist that I’ve been ambivalent about the proliferation of club programs in all sports — boys and girls — at the youth and high school level, especially when it dilutes the concept of young people playing the sports for sheer enjoyment. Often I’ve noticed the trend is to force gifted young players into specialization and encourage obsession, sometimes at the cost of “normal” high school experiences.

But after talking with the four Club 180 girls pictured in the group shot in the Wednesday paper, and with coach Sam Bartron, I’m comfortable in saying her program seems to have found a balance, in part because it’s designed to be a complement and not a replacement for the state’s high school programs.

I wasn’t able to go into much detail about the leaders of this Class of 2012 in the story, so here’s additional material on each of the four.

Miranda Beal, Air Academy High, committed to the Naval Academy (how’s that for irony?)

“I played soccer up until the fifth grade. My sister (Chelsea), who’s four years older than me, started playing lacrosse. I kind of lost the passion for soccer, and I went to play for Patriot Lacrosse down in Colorado Springs. I’ve been playing it ever since then.”

(Miranda also is a basketball star for Air Academy.)

“I’ve found that lacrosse is so different than a lot of other sports. I don’t know, maybe having a stick in your hands makes it different…The differences between basketball and lacrosse help me enjoy both. I can play catch in lacrosse outside, or in pickup games all day, and I never get tired of it.”

“I ended up with Navy not because it was somewhere I could play lacrosse; it would set me up for my future. Going to the Naval Academy and being in the military meant being part of something that was bigger and also having stories and experiences to talk about at the end of the day that a civilian college woudn’t necessarily give you. After the Naval Academy, I’ll have a job and a top-notch education. Serving my country is what I want to do. My dad (Donald) was in the military for 20-plus years, and I’ve always had that mentality, I guess.”

“A lot of the girls on Team 180 have been playing together since, gosh, their elementary school years. I came on the scene before my 10th-grade year. They all knew each other so well, and because of that, we knew how each other worked. In the nd, we were able to gel so well. A lot of the college coaches who come to our games go up to Sam afterwards and say how much fun we are to watch. We play really well together and it makes for a fluid game.”

Sam Bartron on Beal: “It’s such a good crossover for her to embrace lacrosse. The two sports gel perfectly in the way we move the ball, positioning, and attack moves. She’s tall and a lot of those schools are looking for these tall, athletic girls. She’s so hard-working. She had a job down in the Springs, too, but she was still driving up to Denver to do all kinds of training with us.”

Emma Lazaroff, attends Fairview, plays for the unified district team at Centaurus, committed to Duke

“My brother played lacrosse and my dad coached my brother. I was always around lacrosse, and eventually kind of picked it up and fell in love with it.”

“I started lacrosse in the seventh grade, and then I didn’t play in eighth grade because I didn’t like it at first. I liked hockey a lot better.”

“In hockey, I played for a year-round club team (the Colorado Selects), so that took up all my time. My hockey coach actually forced me to choose between lacrosse and hockey because I was missing too much of each. I decided to gow ith lacrosse. . . It was one of the hardest decisions of my life. I thought I wanted to play ice hockey in college because I didn’t play lacrosse in eighth grade and I didn’t know what my potential was for lacrosse. But I realized that being put in that situation with hockey, I wanted to play lacrosse.”

“I think that hockey definitely helped me because I was a goalie and it involved hand-eye coordination, watching the puck. That’s all lacrosse it, watching the ball into your stick. I was always a bit antsy as an ice hockey goalie because I wanted to go out there and skate. I thought I was fast enough. When I did dry-land conditioning, I would be the first one back. All my assets from hockey transfer over to being a lacrosse player.”

On her choice of Duke University: “I walked onto the campus and I thought, ‘This is where I want to go.’ It’s an awesome school. Lacrosse gave me an opportunity to go to such an amazing school, and Duke is one of the top four lacrosse teams in the nation. . . Getting me to Duke is one of the greatest things lacrosse could do. I’m going to graduate with one of the most prestigious degrees you can have, and I’ll be pre-med.”

Sam Bartron on Lazaroff: “She’s a hard-worker, very bright, very coachable, very eager to learn, never quits. I laugh beceause every time she shoots and scores, she has to hug everybody. I asked her, ‘Do you really need to do all that hugging right now?’ She’s like, ‘Yes, I think so!'”

(Keep in mind that Lazaroff scored 111 — that’s one hundred and eleven — goals as a high school junior.)

(Lucy — her teammates call her “Lulu” — also is a star field hockey player, and she hopes to play both sports at Stanford.)

“I think this started when I was really little because my dad was an All-America for lacrosse, so it was even before I could play. At least for girls, you can’t play until you’re in third grade, at least in a league, so we grew up since we were really little with lacrosse sticks and I would go out in the backyard. . . I have a picture of my first lacrosse stick and I was really tiny. I was the shortest in my grade forever. My first lacrosse stick was just as tall as me.”

“A lot of people relate lacrosse to basketball and field hockey to soccer because the positioning is very similar between the sports, respectively. There are certain aspects of lacrosse and field hockey that help me in the other sport. About half my current state championship field hockey team (at Kent Denver) plays on the lacrosse team, too. . . It helps you think outside the box, rather than inside the box. Creativity is what keep the sports fresh. By playing the two sports, it keeps each fresh every time I play it.”

“I started with Team 180 when I was pretty young. I met Sam because we had this team I played on when I was in the third grade and we never lost a game and it was great. Our coach got hurt, so Sam came in to help out, and we got to know how intense she is. That’s probably her best quality, and how great she was at lacrosse as a player and with all her knowledge. When she put a team together for our year, almost all of us transferred over and started playing for her. Through the years, she’s helped us develop. At least in Colorado, lacrosse is very much a growing sport and even my big sister, who played lacrossse in Colorado, didn’t have all these club opportunities and all these tournaments to go to, to be seen. I think Sam reinvented the whole club system in Colorado. New girls are added to the mix, but we knew who we were playing with so we could develop chemistry. When we played the good East Coast teams, we knew what to do because we had instilled confidence and had skills we wouldn’t have learned without playing on Club 180.”

On her choice of Stanford: “It was one of the first schools that showed any interest in me and Sam knew the coach and had a few players there before. I knew that throughout high school, I’ve worked my tail off to get really good grades because I wanted to go somewhere that was very academically rigorous. . . When I went to visit Stanford, everyone was so happy there, I couldn’t help but feel happy to be there and be longing to be part of that program. It was really nice because a lot of people say don’t choose your school for the coach because you could break your leg or for some reason be unable to play, so I wanted to make sure I liked the school. Then I met the coach (Amy Bokker), and it was perfect. I didn’t have to make the decision on whether I liked the school or I liked the coach. I liked everything.”

On playing both sports collegiately: “I’m looking into it right now. It’s kind of tricky because of the scholarship situation. It’s getting complicated. But I think I might.” At that point, she laughed and added, “I’m planning on it.”

Sam Bartron on Dikeou: “The best wapon we have is her speed. She’s the fastest player on the field. We do little things like design plays where we’d (get) the ball over everyone’s heads so she could go pick it up and be one-on-one and score. We used to call that the crowd pleaser … She always was a little smaller than everyone else, not so much anymore, but she was always the one running so fast that she she fell, she rolled for a long time. And you always knew there were going to be tears at the end of the game.”

“I also played soccer for a really long time. I was luck enough to start playing lacrosse in second grade. I think I started to play because my friends were playing. My dad had played in high school and I thought it would be fun. I’ve always liked it, but over the last couple of years, I started to like to even more.”

(The strange thing here is that not only is Gersoff also a national-team caliber field hockey player, she plays goalie in that sport and midfield in lacrosse.)

“It’s kind of a funny mix … The agility work, changing of direction, change of speed things apply in both of them.”

“Collegiately, I’m going to play both sports. With the track I’m on in field hockey right now, it depends on a few things falling into place, but if I end up on the national team, I probably would have to take a few years off from playing lacrosse. I never intend to have to stop playing one or the other completely, though.”

On choosing Princeton: “I wanted to play both sports in college and an Ivy League school gave me the best opportunity to do that. Gosh, for field hockey, I’m going to have an opportunity to play with three Olympians, so it’s going to be cool.”

Sam Bartron on Gersoff: “Anya is probably the hardest-wroking athlete I’ve ever known, hands down. . . The very first time I met her, it took her a little while to open up because that’s just how she was. Then, by about year three, we were starting to get smiles. I thought, ‘OK, we’re breaking through here.’ She’s absolutely terrific.”

Bartron on the entire Class of 2012: “It’s one of those groups where I’m going to be pretty emotional when I actually say goodbye to them. The nice thing I have is, and this has been happening since I started this, they come back to help coach the younger girls as well. That kind of keeps the dream alive.”

Where is the list of colleges for the Team 180 lacrosse players graduating in 2014? Those talented young ladies are good role models for Colorado, their respective high schools, and local communities. This 2014 team has players committed to play at Duke, Columbia, Kenyon, Univ of Oregon, Dusquene, American, Claremont, and Elon. Given the Denver Post’s circulation and strong high school sports coverage, will there be a story on the 2014 graduates with college committments in place already.

Neil Devlin, originally from the Philadelphia area, has covered high school sports in Colorado for more than 30 years, writing about the people, athletes and events that encompass the Rocky Mountain prep sports world.